B.B. King
Gertrude Rainey
The History of Blues Music
Bessie Smith
The Blues
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The Blues is 12-bars
Uses emotional lyrics, such as
“I’m feeling down and out. My
baby has just left me.”
Bad luck and trouble are
always present in the Blues.
Rhythms repeat the chants of
sorrow
Improvised singing and playing
Slow and offbeat rhythms
Listen to “Sometimes I Feel
Like a Motherless Child”
The Birth
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The origins of blues is not unlike the origins of life. For
many years it was recorded only by memory, and relayed
only live, and in person.
The Blues were born in the North Mississippi Delta
following the Civil War.
African-American slaves forced to work from sunup to
sundown sang a rhythmic “call and response” to ease
their brutal labor and to communicate without the
masters knowledge.
Know as field hollers, a respected worker would shout a
solo line, then the rest would repeat a unison line, all
while being in rhythm with the work at hand.
This evolved to the solo singer also repeating the unison
line and adapting the holler for solo performance.
The Growth
Blues music was first recorded by Thomas
Edison in 1895 with pianist George W.
Johnson’s “The Laughing Song”.
 Handy, known as the father of the Blues,
first transcribed Blues music in Memphis
just after the turn of the century.
 Mamie Smith’s 1920 recording the “Crazy
Blues” became the first commercially
popular Blues record.
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W.C . Handy
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The blues form was first popularized by
the black composer W.C. Handy (18731958).
They call him the Father of the Blues . . .
Born in Florence, Alabama, in 1873, W.C. Handy was
by no means a Delta bluesman. He was a student of music as a
child, playing the cornet, and later traveled the South with dance
bands. Handy had heard something akin to the blues as early as
1892, but it was while waiting for an overdue train in Tutwiler,
Mississippi, in 1903 that he heard an itinerant bluesman playing
slide guitar. Handy called it "the weirdest music I had ever
heard."
Slide Guitars
Son House
Robert Johnson
Country Blues
The earliest blues recorded in the 1920’s and
1930’s was country blues.
 This music was simply one African American
male singer accompanied by an acoustic steelstring guitar.
 Artists include Robert Johnson, Son House, Blind
Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Huddie Ledbetter
(Leadbelly), Mississippi John Hurt, and Lightnin’
Hopkins.
 Listen to “Sun Gonna Shine”
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Classic Blues
The sophisticated classic blues style of the 1920s
and 1930s from Memphis, Kansas City, Chicago,
and New York, featured a female soloist with a
small Dixieland Jazz band or piano.
 The Classic Blues style was popular among
newly arrived blacks in the cities.
 Some who sang classic blues were Bessie Smith,
Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday, and Ella
Fitzgerald.
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Urban Blues
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A 1930s to 1950 style, urban blues (also known as
rhythm and blues or R&B) features a vocalist and a small
band with instruments such as electric guitar, harmonica,
piano, string bass, drum set, and sometimes saxophones
and trumpets.
Leading urban blues guitarists were Muddy Waters,
Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, T-Bone Walker, Big
Bill Broonzy, and Gatemouth Brown.
Harmonica (blues harp) players included Little Walter,
Sonny Boy Williamson an
Urban blues laid the groundwork for 1950s Rock ‘n Roll.
Popularity of Blues Music
Women stopped singing in their churches and
schools, and began to perform in theaters,
clubs, dance halls, and vaudeville shows.
 The popularity of the blues marked a new era
for black music. It combined the styles of the
past with a new type of song.
 The result was the creation of a style of music
that influence various genres of music including
jazz, pop, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and
rap.
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